Well, we really aren't working with much money right now. We will need to dip into our Emergency Fund this month as S is out of work much longer than we thought he'd be and do not have enough to cover our car insurance. I can continue to cover all of the rest of the bills plus pay extra to his credit card as well as put a little in savings but did not save for car insurance accordingly. So, I'm going to take the money out of the E-fund so we do not have to hold it on our credit cards and replenish the E-fund as quickly as possible.
On to the budget:
Income - $1280
Reoccurring Bills (car insurance, gifts, car maintenance, etc.) - $330
M's Student Loan - $200
S's Credit Card - $255
E-fund - $25
O's Savings - $25
Travel Savings - $25
Baby Expenses - $100 (diapers, milk, etc.)
Gasoline - $140
Retirement - $50 (I know this should be more, its just slightly under 4% of my income)
Fun Money - $40
O's Gym Class - $90
So, there you have it. Our meager budget for July. I know we do not have any housing expenses right now as we are very lucky to have these paid for us but will in the near future need to start paying them ourselves and then will need to revamp the budget. At that time we will have more income and revamping the budget shouldn't take too much work.
Wish us luck!
-M
Labels: Budget
Today is my birthday. As a birthday present to myself I blew our June budget. Ok, I'm kidding about it being a present to myself but our June budget is pretty much toast. This also happened in May! Last week, my budgeting software crashed and we lost all of our information. This all could have been avoided if I backed it up as I should have but I didn't. I'm in the process of setting everything back up and recommiting to our budget. I will be back in posting action soon as well as tracking our spending.
-M
Editor Note: I forgot to mention that I opened my Roth IRA yesterday!
I certainly have not been keeping this updated as I should. I haven't even been working on it as I should and probably should start saving up my dollars to donate at the end. Let's start from the top and go through if the goals are achievable or not.
I'll start by saying that all of the travel that I included is not going to be possible. Yes I know I have almost three years to do it all but even in three years it will not be possible. Cape Cod, Graceland, Mark Twain House, Dude Ranch, Country Music, Football Hall of Fame, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Liberty Bell are probably not places that I'm going to see in the next two years and six months. Everything else, should be doable. As far as travel abroad, I doubt we'll go any where besides Germany. So, Italy and France sight seeing will not get done.
Then we move into the time consuming activities. We do have an idea of when we're going to be moving to our own apartment, keep an eye out in the next six to nine months for an update on this. Pay off debt well that wasn't very specific. It does not say credit card debt it says debt so by that I assume I meant all debt and that is entirely impossible. Together, S and I, have a large sum of student loan debts as you can see from the side bar. We will not be able to pay these off in the few short years we have until this goal session is finished. I have to say that I have been doing very well with cards on holidays. We have a few friends with birthdays coming up so we need to get those cards in the mail by the end of the week. As far as the reunion party, that will have to wait. It probably will not happen in the next two and a half years.
We created a budget. We have been unsuccessful at using the budget well, we'll keep trying and by the end of the year we hope to have a good handle on this. Along with failing at budgeting, I have failed at keeping my fun money spending down to $50. Next month, this will be my number one goal, money wise. We are going to need to use half of our emergency fund savings this month but will continue to build toward our $10,000 goal starting next month.
I have been baking at least once a month so far. This is an activity I really like to do and plan to continue to do it. I also have been making larger breakfasts now that O can eat grown up food and S is home. We have not gone to church yet and so we have made no progress toward getting O baptized. We need to seriously start working on both of these things because O is now a year old. I can proudly say that we have been putting forth an effort to read a story to O each day. I tried to read a book to her each morning and S reads to her in the afternoon. Most days she gets two or three books. Her attention span isn't very long and it is difficult to get her to sit and listen to the stories. Most often we are reading to her when she is playing with something else.
S and I had a discussion about end of life paper work last week. He doesn't see the importance of having it now. I stressed that it is important and want to get working on it. This will take more convincing I'm sure but we should see progress in this area soon. The retirement account... I am going to open an IRA on June 22. It will be the day I turn 24. I'll post about that once it happens.
Oh, health and fitness, how I long for you and yet do not put forth enough effort. I am not training for any runs right now. I don't think I'll be taking dance lessions any time soon but hopefully I'll be able to squeeze something in. We tried a new burger place not that long ago. I need to update that on the side bar. I am making progress there. I have not bought soda in the past few months. I am only drinking free soda and soda when dining out. I got an amazing cookbook for Christmas two years ago. I have been adding recipes to this cookbook as it is three ring style when I try something I like. I think that counts. I am not putting forth enough effort to lose weight at this time. I have been tracking what I'm eating and will be choosing better food starting in the morning. I have not been working out. This will be a fail because I have lacked doing it for so many months already. I will need to start implementing an exercise routine though. I will update on this later as well. Even though the exercise isn't going as planned, I have been drinking my water most days. Celebrate my little accomplishment.
I'm going to end my update here. I know that's not all 101 goals. I will do another major update next month with the second half of the goal list. As you can see, overall I have not made much progress on any of these goals. I need to seriously start deciding which I need to focus my energy on first and do so.
-M
Labels: Goals
Here it is June already! We have three birthdays and Father's Day this month.
Savings:
Emergency Fund: Last month we had $586 in there and this month we have $962. That is an increase of $376. We are working on getting to $1000 to start and eventually $10,000. I know the sidebar says $1,500 by August and we're not going to hit that goal. We're going to stop putting so much in after we reach $1,000 because I want to focus on S's credit card.
Travel Fund - We are focusing on S's credit card and the emergency fund right now. We only transfered $5 into this account this month.
I still haven't called about my retirement account. I will do this during June! I won't be able to put much into it at first but hope to be able to work up to 15% quickly.
O's Savings - We opened the account with $100.50 from her piggy bank. We are putting 75% of her birthday money into the account this month. We will use the other 25% to buy some toys. While she wouldn't know if we put it all in the account considering her age, we want to use this formula each year with her so we decided to start now.
Net worth - $25,585
Debts:
We didn't acquire any more debt this month! WOOHOO!
S's credit card - We were able to put $650 toward it this month to get the balance down to $1,550. I am expecting it to take three more months to pay off completely. It is tempting to use our emergency fund to pay it off this month but won't do it in case we have an actual emergency. It is far better to have the fund to rebuild than to have more credit card debt.
The medical bills are paid off as of Monday! The check has been cashed and we are all clear of medical bills. I'm counting this as being paid in May though because I mailed the check out in May.
We are paying my student loan bills on time each month. While the balance isn't going down very quickly it is moving down. We paid off $110 this month. We have decided to pay an extra $18 per month to make the payment a nice round number. It doesn't seem like $18 would make much of a difference but using this calculator we figured out we'd have my loans paid off 9 months earlier than if we paid the minimum payments. While 9 months isn't all that significant in a ten year repayment plan it is something to look forward to. S's student loans are in deferment until December '09.
Til next time,
-M
Labels: State of the Finances
I haven't been posting as much lately. I have noticed that when I post more I spend less. I'm sure this is related because as I post I feel more accountable for what I'm spending. As I'll show in about two weeks, my budget plan did not work. I have spent way more than I should in some categories. Overall, I've made more money but instead of snowflaking it away I spent it. Now is the time to turn things around. The rest of the month will be an improvement.
-M
Today was pay day. I brought home more than expected so I have a lot of snowflakes to tack on to S's credit card payment this month. I'm pretty excited about this because the sooner we can get that paid off the sooner we can bump up the e-fund. We are hoping to have S's credit card paid off by the end of August but we'll see what happens.
-M
I am deleting this post because I haven't had a chance to work through it all just yet. I'll just do an end of the month budget recap.
-M
Labels: Budget
Yesterday, while at work I found out that a job that I want is opening up but not at the place I want it. I'd be earning about $150 more a month if I were to take the promotion. That isn't very much money considering I'd be going from four ten hour days to five eight hour days. With that I have to consider gas. This opportunity is only one mile further from my house than my current job but that means an extra 30 miles a week that I'd be driving because of the extra day. My car gets about 22 or so miles per gallon and a gallon is about $2.20 a gallon so I'd be spending an extra $3 or so a week on gas or $12 a month.
After taking this over with S and a few others I have decided to apply for it. An extra $150 a month or even an extra $135 a month after extra gas expenses is something that we can use to pay down his credit card and increase our savings.
-M
It has been cold and rainy here all week. I haven't ventured out except to go to work. The weather is becoming a little bit depressing. Last weekend we had temperatures in the 90's so it was almost too hot to do anything in the middle of the day and this past week and now weekend is rainy. I hate to drag O out in the rain considering she is already sick. The weather is making me miss my family and friends upstate even though their weather is just as crumby. We are going to visit them Mother's Day weekend which is coming up quickly. Hopefully, after we go out to the store later this afternoon I'll feel a little better.
-M
PS: S comes home in two weeks. He'll be finished with school with the exception of one class but at least he's not leaving for extended periods of time any more.
Well, well, well... another month come and gone already! Let's get to business shall we.
Savings- we did better than expected this month in our saving categories. This is partly because we deposited our wedding checks and partly because we got some good deals on baby products.
E-fund:
Increase of $585
Travel:
Increase of $2295
This means we surpassed our goal and it's in need of revision. We are trying to save enough to go to Germany next spring so most of our wedding money went into this account. We are unsure of how much we'll need to get the three of us to Germany and to sight see but we are thinking our goal should be $5,000. If we spent it all that's fine and if we come home with some that's even better.
Again, we haven't touched retirement. I am going to call about setting up a retirement account through work sometime this month. I'm pretty sure I have to be there ten months before I can do this and I'm fast approaching the ten month mark.
We have a very stuffed piggy bank right now for our little O. When S finishes college we are going to open a savings account for her and deposit this month. This will be done this month so we'll have someone to show in O's account next month.
Our net worth, went down by $3,375. I am very disappointed. S had to take on another student loan to finish up college. He should not need any more loans and we're working on paying his credit card off so I hope to see a big change in the right direction next month.
Debts- We acquired more debt this month. I'm disappointed by this. The student loan debt was necessary but S added a little to his credit card debt which was not necessary. I can only say, we are starting a budgeting challenge today and hopefully that will allow us to free up some money to throw toward S's credit card to get that balance down and eventually gone.
We will have better things to report next month.
-M
Labels: State of the Finances
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